Into Amazonia Brazil with Michael Palin

I've been travelling the world for the past 25 years.

I've met so many people, in so many countries, that everyone

thinks of me as the man who's been everywhere.

But in all these years, there's been one big gap in my passport.

Nothing less than the fifth largest country on earth.

A country blessed with a melting pot of peoples

and an abundance of resources.

A country that's risen, almost out of nowhere, to become

a 21st-century superpower.

It's the host of the next World Cup and the next Olympic Games.

It's a country whose time has come.

How can I say I've seen the world, when I haven't seen Brazil?

OK, waterfall. We defy you. We defy you.

Brazil is now the sixth largest economy in the world,

with 80% of the population living in megacities where industry

and technology flourish.

But alongside this 21st-century dynamism,

there are people in Brazil whose way of life has remained

unchanged for thousands of years.

It's in their land that I start this leg of my journey.

Amazonia is a region which has enticed explorers

and adventurers for centuries.

In this episode, I shall be travelling its vast distances,

from the border with Venezuela to the nation's capital, Brasilia.

I'm excited, and a little apprehensive.

Below me thick rainforest cloaks an area as remote

and inaccessible as anywhere on the planet.

When people from the west landed in Brazil, just over 500 years

ago, there were some five million indigenous people living here.

A fraction is now left.

One of the largest and least contacted of these are the Yanomami.

I land at the recently-built government outpost,

3km away from their village.

The sound of the plane has drawn an inquisitive crowd.

The Yanomami have a reputation for being warriors and hunters,

and I'm barely off the plane before I'm into archery practice.

That rock there.

SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

Wow, pretty good! What do you mean, go and get it?

All right.

It's a bit of bamboo, very sharp and

fine point of... Looks like bone or something,

maybe it's just wood.

Beautiful, very nice, very nice. Now you... That bird there.

Oh, wow.

Very good.

No, I'm not going to do it, you go and get it.

They're much less

fierce than I expected and seem to regard me, and my accessories,

as a considerable source of entertainment.

It's good to be here. I've never

been in this part of the world before.

Oh, yeah, it's my own hair.

I didn't expect to be doing

comedy on my first day in the Amazon.

It's an hour's walk through the forest to where they live,

and as we finally approach the thatched walls of their village,

or maloca, I realise I'm entering deeply unfamiliar territory.

Unlike us, the Yanomami live communally in a huge, round,

thatched house.

It must be at least 400m in circumference.

There appears to be no privacy whatsoever.

I've no idea where you're supposed to wash or do all those other

private things.

They don't seem to do toilets, but perhaps they don't need them

with a million square miles of virgin forest outside.

At last, I'm shown to my room, sorry, bed, sorry, hammock.

Now here, this is my hammock.

This is where I'm sleeping, I think, thank you.

Oh, dear. I've been in hammocks before.

I don't think I've ever spent an entire night in one,

so this'll be a bit of a first.

Everyone here, of course,

in the maloca, they all sleep in hammocks, so I think the thing

to do is, you have to get... That's right, in the middle there.

Oh, that's rather nice.

Then you've got to swing the legs up... Wow, ah.

Then stay here for about another 12 hours.

That's lovely.

The maloca seems to consist entirely of women,

children and one very old man.

But then, just as I'm settling in to some quality hammock time,

I get the word that the rest of the villagers are in the forest

preparing the traditional welcome for outsiders.

The welcome is both an opportunity to dress up - in this case

with red urucu dye and white feathers from the harpy eagle,

and a way to intimidate anyone who might cross their path.

Dressed to kill, they head back to the maloca,

but there's still one important ingredient for any Yanomami ritual.

The Yanomami are famed takers of a powerful psychotropic snuff

made from the bark of forest trees.

Apparently, it puts them into a trance-like state,

so they can communicate with the spirit world.

SINGING

Suitably prepared, the welcoming party enter the maloca

and the ritual celebrations begin.

CHANTING

I can understand why the Yanomami were nicknamed the "fierce people."

The women don't take the snuff and are less intimidating

with their version of the hokey cokey.

After circling the maloca repeatedly,

the men and boys go out into the blazing heat of the

day and work themselves into a state of stomping, rhythmic agitation.

I'm just exhausted watching.

After that, they need a break. I'm worried about them.

Feathers are blowing away, ah.

-ALL:

-O-o-o-h!

After the climax of the welcoming ceremony,

participants are rewarded for their exertions with almost unlimited

amounts of a rainforest cocktail made from fermented peach palm.

I'd quite like to try some. Maybe I'll start with a child's portion.

Look at that.

As the day draws to a close, the effects of the snuff

and the cocktail create a soporific air as the maloca quietens down.

It's time for me to get ready for bed and my first night in a hammock.

Malarial mosquitoes are a constant threat here,

and the Yanomami are as anxious as I am to protect me.

I have a very bad record with mosquito nets. They always collapse.

Ah, yeah. That's it, yes.

I just need someone who knows how to do it,

that's the thing. I don't know either.

Sydney Harbour Bridge, this one.

Don't try this at home.

Four days later.

Is it good?

The slow pace of life is wonderfully infectious,

but as dusk draws in, I finally find a way to make myself useful.

There you are, you see. Great explorers.

Telling bedtime stories to people who don't understand a word.

That's Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt.

He was the President of America, and he came to this part when it was

very difficult to get through the forest.

He came on a trip with his son who was called Kermit.

Yeah, honestly. And a man called Rondon.

Mr Rondon was a Brazilian.

And they came here and they got

completely stuck and they found a river

to take them away and they didn't... They called it The River of Doubt.

They didn't know where it began, didn't know where it ended.

But eventually, after many days,

they pushed their way down this river

against a very hostile environment,

and they came out at the other end and Rondon, the Brazilian,

was so thankful to his mates, the Roosevelts,

that he called one of the rivers the Rio Roosevelt,

Rio Roosevelt.

Yeah, no, you laugh,

and he also called one of the rivers Rio Kermit

after his son. End of the story.

Bedtime. Off you go.

Night-time in the maloca is only slightly less rushed than daytime.

The pet sloth they keep in the rafters

seems perfectly adapted to the pace of life here.

"Ah, there's the sleepless Englishman,

"always wanting to improve his mind.

"What is the point?"

Things weren't always as secure for the Yanomami.

For a long time, their remoteness had protected them

from the trauma of contact, but the discovery of gold in the late

1980s changed all that.

Their land was invaded by thousands of illegal miners,

garimpeiros, who not only poisoned the river with the mercury

they needed to flush out the gold, but brought with them diseases,

like measles and tuberculosis, which swept through the tribe, killing

hundreds and changing forever the

way they perceived the outside world.

Only when the Brazilian government, under intense international

pressure, took measures to get rid of the miners,

did the Yanomami begin to recover.

But the lure of gold will always be a threat and no-one knows

this better than the shaman of this village, Davi Kopenawa.

HE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE

He's travelled in Brazil and overseas to plead their cause,

to impress on the outside world the need for continued protection.

As I watch him in action today, I see no remote tribesman,

but a consummate politician working on behalf of his people.

The Yanomami have lived in the forest for thousands of years.

Are you consulted by the government about how best to use the forest?

HE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE

-TRANSLATION:

-They don't call us to go to the capital, Brasilia,

so we can hear what the government is planning to do with our land.

They don't ask us, the indigenous people, they just tell us.

"We are going to build the Belo Monte Dam.

"We are going to build the Northern Ring Road.

"We are going to build the army headquarters.

"We are going to open mines in the indigenous territory."

They don't consult us.

The fact that they have cut

and cleared a football pitch in the middle of the forest,

shows the Yanomami are not resistant to all outside influence.

As soccer-mad as the rest of Brazil, they save on kit by painting

their team colours straight onto their bodies.

And the Kop's filling up nicely.

But this outside influence, like football, has a purpose.

Many Brazilians feel indigenous peoples don't need such vast

tracts of land, which could be

better exploited for logging or cattle,

and of course mining.

So by hook or by crook, the government wants to bring

the Yanomami into this debate.

One hook is the provision of health care.

Health workers come to the maloca to treat injuries,

dispense drugs, and inoculate the children.

Today, a group of government workers has flown in to tell

the Yanomami of a new initiative in the way health care is delivered.

Despite all these undoubtedly benevolent actions, Davi,

the shaman, remains wary.

You have a, um, a clinic near here, you play football. Do you see

engagement with the outside world as the way forward for the Yanomami?

HE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE

-TRANSLATION:

-Our priority is healthcare. This is what we need.

And other things like playing football,

this is really not a priority

because this is the white man's custom.

Our priorities are healthcare, our own culture, language and customs.

This is what is important.

Alongside the health programme is a school to teach them Portuguese,

a pre-requisite for closer engagement with the rest of Brazil.

What I've sensed from my brief stay here is the Yanomami have no

strong desire to change.

Like so many of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, it will be

forced upon them.

But who am I to judge whether a life of hunting with arrows

and snorting snuff is preferable to a life of iPads and TV soap operas?

But surely the choice should be theirs.

In many of these really remote northern areas of Brazil,

like where the Yanomami live, there's no road access at all.

Everything goes in and out by plane, including me.

So, I'm heading south now, towards the Amazon.

The mighty Amazon is at the heart of a network of over a thousand rivers.

Together, they contain up to 20% of the world's fresh water.

I leave the headwaters of the Rio Branco

and head south towards Manaus where all the great rivers gather.

I'm on my way to find out more about the people who live from these

rivers, from the growing business of eco-tourism,

to the declining fortunes of a people

almost as endangered as the Yanomami - the Seringueiros.

150 years ago, wild rubber,

harvested by thousands of Indians and the caboclos,

those mixed-race Indians

and Portuguese, created a boom which made fortunes for the rubber barons,

but a harsh, and pretty miserable life for those who collected it.

In 1876, an Englishman called

Henry Wickham stole some rubber seeds and sent them back to England.

By 1900, they had been transplanted to the Far East,

and by 1920,

the Brazilian rubber industry had all but collapsed.

-Michael.

-Gabriel...

-Welcome to the St Thomas village.

..yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you.

In the village of Sao Tomas, I'm met by local guide, Gabriel.

He takes me to meet Elias, one of the old Seringueiros.

He still taps the few remaining rubber trees which

leak their now not-so-precious fluid.

Rubber man, he know about rubber, where rubber tree is,

-he knows to cut the rubber tree.

-Hello.

-Hello, mister, this is Michael.

-And he's Elias, yes.

So, here's the rubber, rubber tree.

Here they are wild trees. They grow here and there and everywhere.

Yeah, yeah.

So, here's the sap, coming out, yeah. And this... Thank you.

-Ah, the seed.

-Yes, rubber.

This is, these are the seeds of the rubber tree.

So this is what the seeds looked like

-that Henry Wickham...

-Exactly.

..took from the Amazon, went back to Kew.

Back to, erm...

-They then took them out to Malaysia.

-To Malaysia.

And end of the Brazilian rubber industry.

I might take one myself

and start the rubber industry in Sheffield.

Yeah.

They need some more investment.

HE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE

"It's dry," he said.

It's dry. I know, I know. We're pretending.

HE LAUGHS

The key to turning the white sap into big business was

a process invented in 1839 by Thomas Goodyear.

Vulcanisation, he called it.

By heating latex with sulphur,

he found that the brittle rubber became elastic and malleable.

And so the floodgates to 100 uses,

from tyres to waterproofs, were opened.

So the idea is to get it in a nice

sort of flexible piece of malleable material. OK.

-Look here.

-Yeah.

Here we are, yeah, yeah. That's it, yeah, here we are.

Stick, yeah.

That's rubber indeed, yes. It reminds me of the handlebars

I have on my old bicycle at home, well, you wouldn't know, but I did.

To collect latex, then to make this process here.

So this is just a larger version of that?

-Oh!

-Yeah, like a ball.

Yeah, that works. To you!

And so did, did people like him get rich?

THEY SPEAK PORTUGUESE

The foreigners got rich.

So he said, er, he said only the, rubber barons.

-Caboclos?

-Caboclos, no.

-Yes. Hard life.

Elias carries with him an air of sadness and regret,

as do many caboclos of his generation.

Life goes on. But there will be no more good times.

If there ever were.

Even a younger man like Gabriel believes the river has

magical properties, like the legendary pink dolphin.

Some caboclos they believe that the animal has the capacity to

become a man at midnight and sometimes it's possible to find some

girls here pregnant. They said that the dolphin did this.

All the guys who are to blame, blame

the dolphin, that's great. It's a big dolphin.

A dolphin...a dolphin's responsible.

There's something about the pink river dolphin that intrigues me.

Thanks to a local dolphin wrangler, there is a way I can find out more.

Well, the first time I've actually done...swum with

the dolphins... They are here, which is rather good,

but I have to wear this, this is regulations for the Brazilian

authorities, even though I'm only going to be standing on the board.

It's not some strange incontinence garment, in case you think so.

So, here we go.

The water's very black, so I can't actually see anything at all.

OK, on the platform now, and where is the dolphin?

Then, quite suddenly, there they are.

She's quite alarming with the teeth.

Unable to resist the lure of the sardine.

Terrific jaws, in fact, rows of about 25 teeth on either side.

At first it's slightly... Ooh, I can feel his body

rubbing against the bottom of my leg.

Once they've got the fish, they just sort of rub against you

and almost use you to bounce off back into the water.

They're big, sort of sturdy, quite heavy creatures.

I'm now actually off the platform, free in the water

and a bit apprehensive of the beak.

Whoa. Oh, yes, very good. I wish I could do that.

Fantastic. I so easily could have been that sardine.

OK, guys, well, you can all go home now leave me

floating in the Rio Negro with my new friends, my new chums.

We are the sardine generation.

There are many spectacular sights in the Amazon,

but few can rival the confluence of the region's

two mightiest rivers - the muddy Amazon itself, rich with

acidic sludge from the Andes,

and the tannin-black waters of the Rio Negro.

It is an absolutely extraordinary sight,

because it is so clear and sharp that it really

is like a battle between the black tea and the milky coffee coming in.

The coffee colour wins over the black tea in the end.

Leaving the new double-strength Amazon to flow another

thousand miles to the sea,

we descend to the city which is synonymous with this great river.

Manaus, once a jungle outpost, is now home to two million people.

Rubber put Manaus on the map. At the heyday of the boom,

it was the richest city in the southern hemisphere.

The first in Brazil to have trams, the second to have electricity.

At the turn of the 20th century, fortunes were made

and spent here.

The rubber barons spared nothing in creating a mini

Paris in the rainforest.

But when the British stole the rubber

trade away from Brazil, the glories of Manaus quickly faded.

Except, that is, for one magnificent survivor.

The Teatro Amazonas, the Manaus Opera House,

has been sumptuously restored.

Designed by Italians, built with Scottish ironwork

and French marble, it was intended to show that,

jungle or no jungle, anything Europe could do, Brazil could do better.

100 years on, the Amazon Philharmonic Orchestra

are rehearsing the overture to a Brazilian opera called

Il Guarany, about a doomed love affair between a Portuguese

noblewoman and a native Indian.

The musicians come from all over the world,

many from the former East European countries.

The latest of a long line of immigrants who've come

to the Amazon to find a better life.

Manaus might have had its day as the centre of the great rubber boom,

but there was still one more act in the great Brazilian rubber drama.

It was here, at the ferry port of Santarem

on the Amazon, in the mid-1920s,

that a group of Americans from the Ford motor company

set off to find a site in the jungle

where they could build their very own rubber plantation.

I'm going to take a ferry myself to see how their dream turned out.

The ferry's in there somewhere.

I've just got to find it.

These tightly-packed boats are the lifeblood of the river system.

Not just for people, but for goods too.

No trucks are allowed at the jetty, so all cargo,

which seems to consist largely of beer,

has to be manhandled onto the boats.

But, amazingly, my 4.30 ferry out of Santarem leaves dead on 4.30.

I'm now on my way to one of the

strangest locations of modern Brazilian history,

a place called Fordlandia, which Henry Ford created

in the 1920s,

an experiment in rubber production.

There isn't a lot of room on board, but not to worry.

Journey only takes 14 hours.

We shall navigate rivers the size of lakes,

turning south off the Amazon and up its tributary,

the Tapajos.

I must say, when I first got on, there was a bit of chaos. I thought,

"Can I survive this?" But it kind of...

There's an order here and you settle down

and get your hammock and I

just can't believe I've discovered the joys of hammock travelling

so late in my

travelling life. They're just... They are...

They are wonderful. And here in Brazil, of course, you

don't have the government hammock or the

shipping line hammock, you have your own colour -

look at all these lovely colours!

And you take up a minimum amount of space.

Pretty simple. If you want to have a look around, you do

that, and if you want to be a bit private, you just,

you know, that, and it's...

I think I was just born to swing from hooks.

It's a grey old morning on the Tapajos,

and I've transferred to a smaller ferry which will drop me off

where the men from Dearborn, Michigan, first arrived

some 80 years ago.

And what looks like a mirage at first is indeed my destination -

Fordlandia.

There it is.

To turn Ford's dream into reality, factories

were built and Midwestern houses and streets

sprang up as fast as the jungle could be stripped and cleared.

Under the guidance of the top men in the American motor industry,

schools were built and a transport system created to carry

the workforce.

It was an epic adventure.

And in the end, an epic failure.

Ford's plan for his company to produce all its own rubber

collapsed as disease destroyed the trees

and ill-health sapped the workforce.

In 1945, the Americans finally packed up and went home,

leaving behind the ghosts of a great enterprise.

This is all that remains of what was

once Fordlandia's state-of-the-art hospital.

Now the only signs of life are colonies of bats

occupying the rooms and the operating theatres.

And this is it.

This is all that's left of Henry Ford's great dream

of creating the perfect America in Brazil.

Belem, one of the oldest cities of the Amazon, is the perfect

place to lift the spirits.

Located close to where the river meets the sea, it bounces

and bustles with life,

as the fishermen bring in the

produce of the fertile waters of the delta.

Watched all the way by the resident rubbish collectors,

an enthusiastic flock of turkey vultures.

This gothic extravaganza, made from Glaswegian ironwork,

is the market they called Ver-o-peso.

"See the weight." A reference to the days

when the Portuguese extracted taxes on the local produce.

Ver-o-peso is one of the great fish markets in Brazil.

And I'm guided around it by Priscilla, a young music manager,

and someone for whom quality is vital.

Belem's top rated young chef, Thiago Castanho.

Tucunare.

Oh, yeah...tucunare.

-They are cheap.

-Eye on the back, yeah. This is beautiful.

-Very.

What a beautiful-looking fish.

Part of the thing about food here seems there's

so much of everything. Not just fish, but fruit and...

THIAGO SPEAKS PORTUGUESE

Belem has a lot of different food.

-Every fish, every fruit has its season.

-Oh, right. OK.

-So, you're always changing your menu to reflect what is seasonal.

-Yes.

Thiago has had to go back to his kitchen.

But Priscilla is keen to show another aspect of Amazonian produce

dear to her body and soul.

So what's all these?

These are traditional medicines for almost everything.

-From the Amazon, from the rainforest?

-Yes.

All from the rainforest.

Hello. Hola.

THEY SPEAK PORTUGEUSE

-This is andiroba. It's an oil.

-Yeah.

We use for almost everything.

-We use for hair.

-Yeah.

Have beautiful hair. The Indians use for the hair.

-Yes.

-And we use for pain,

-if you have arth...

-Arthritis?

-Yes.

-Yes, on joints.

-Yes, on joints.

Do big companies come round and

look at these and say, "Hey, we can make money out of this."

-Yes.

-Arthritis and shampoo in the same bottle.

-That's something.

-There are now shampoos in Brazil with this.

-Really?

-Really, because companies are coming for this.

This is very traditional. Everyone uses.

What other things do they have here?

I mean, you know, we've been travelling for a long time

and I'm quite, you know, tired,

few aches, you know, you feel just a little bit travel-worn.

Does she have something that would, you know...?

Liven me up?

THEY SPEAK PORTUGUESE

-TRANSLATION:

-We have the natural Viagra,

which is an energising concoction.

It stimulates you sexually and mentally.

That's not quite what I meant, but yeah...

Yes. Yeah, OK.

What is the most popular seller here?

The most popular one you get asked for?

She says a lot of baths for love, that's the top seller.

Baths for love. I love that. It's like...

Yeah, so sex is quite an important

problem for people, I suppose?

Yeah, in Brazil as well?

You always imagine the Brazilians being sexually very happy

-and harmonious and fulfilled.

-Probably because of this.

Probably because of this, yes.

Well, that kind of bottle, yeah.

Oh, well, I don't think I'll take that because, well...

I'm past that now but maybe...

-You should have the spiritual one too.

-Something... Yes.

Something that would help me learn Portuguese.

The reward for a hard morning shopping in this

palace of delights is lunch with Priscilla,

at Thiago's newly opened, decidedly upmarket restaurant.

Thiago may be the star of his

all-male kitchen, but Priscilla makes

it clear the fairer sex is the stronger one around here.

The strong people, they are women. Women are strong in the Amazon.

-Really?

-Really.

A lot of the shopkeepers are women, yeah.

Yeah. You see, the men they don't talk that much, they stay out,

they keep their place.

That's interesting cos the original word,

the Spanish word Amazon was the woman,

the warriors. You know, the...

-Yes.

-Entirely female warriors.

-That's how, that's how I see...

Do you see yourself in that, er, tradition?

Yes, I think so. You've going to meet Gaby.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, the singer.

-Gaby is who you manage, yeah?

-You're

going to understand the power of Amazon women when you meet her.

Gaby Amarantos is quite something.

She's created a fusion of old-style local music with a modern beat

that she's christened tecnobrega.

Gaby's been trying to make it in the business since she was a teenager.

What keeps her going,

even in a modest local bar like this,

is a strength and self-belief which she attributes to her

mixed-race Amazonian roots.

SHE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE

-TRANSLATION:

-I think women from the Amazon feel free and natural because

we are a product of our indigenous

roots and I am very proud of my origins.

I feel free to say how I feel through my music, and I think

this is very particular, special

characteristic of the women from the Amazon.

They are more relaxed.

Gaby's been called the Beyonce of the Amazon,

but to me there's something else going on here.

Something more Boadicea than Beyonce.

I feel a force and the people that watch the show,

they have never seen me, that are not from here...

they see a force of nature,

bringing them the power of Amazonia.

So I feel something that I can't explain, that gives me

goose bumps, that makes people fall in love with this

type of music and they know that there is something behind it...

SHE SINGS IN PORTUGUESE

With the sounds of Gaby's tecnobrega still ringing in my ears,

I head south from Belem up one of

the major tributaries of the Amazon, the Xingu river.

It runs through one of the most protected areas in Brazil.

60 years ago, a reservation

for the ten tribes of the Upper Xingu

was created.

In contrast to the Yanomami, their land is more accessible,

so it's been a constant fight against incursions.

Today, only those invited by the

tribes themselves are allowed to enter.

I've no idea what I shall find, or how I'll be received.

My legs are wobbly. Hello!

Hi. We've been invited here by the Wauja people,

of whom there are fewer than 500 left in the world.

THEY CHANT

The Wauja are feared warriors, renowned for their wrestling skills.

But they're equally well known for their elaborate rituals.

I'm not absolutely sure if this is a war dance or a welcome.

Happily, it turns out to be both.

-Brilliant. That was brilliant.

-Woo!

-Woo!

Fantastic, thank you. Thank you.

Their elaborate body decorations and the feathers they use

on their arms and ears are beautiful,

but to a newcomer, quite mystifying.

As is the purpose of the elaborate dances they've laid on.

Fortunately, I'm in good hands. Our intermediary with the Wauja is

Emi Ireland, an American anthropologist who on several

visits here has learnt the language

and developed a deep affinity with the people.

What's the dance about?

OK, this is the kagapa dance, the kagapa ceremony.

-Kagapa.

-Kagapa.

-Yep.

-And it's a small fish, it's a bait fish and, er, it's er,

you find it in the shallows.

Yes.

Er, next to, under the leaves.

And that's why the young men are wearing leaves,

-cos they are the spirit of the kagapa fish.

-Oh, I see.

And so they appear just as they do in the stream.

And the kagapa fish is a superb bait fish.

So, people are very happy to find kagapa because...

-It leads them to another.

-A big one, yeah.

-I see, yeah.

-So, everybody's in a good mood when there's lots of kagapa around.

-Yeah.

What do they...? Do they catch a lot

of fish, is that their main source of food?

Of protein.

Ah, yeah, but along with, er, they

eat a lot of manioc bread, you'll have some of that.

Yeah.

And they also eat pequi fruit, it is an oily fruit, very nutritious.

How long does this dance go on for?

Ah, it usually goes on for a couple of hours.

And they have other ceremonies that go on for days,

-but not this particular one.

-Yeah.

What's nice is they have this big village with this big population,

so it gives them more options for everything,

more options for ceremonies, more options for marriage partners.

For a long time, people grew up with only one or two

people who they could marry.

Wow, that takes a lot of the complication out of it.

Yes, it certainly does.

You know what you've got to do and who you've got to do it with.

Though it's not easy to get to the upper Xingu,

we're certainly not the first film crew they've ever seen.

Indeed, they now have film equipment themselves,

which they're using to make a photographic record of their tribe,

their way of life.

But are they in danger or losing something

because of all this outside influence?

The notion of purity, whether it's racial purity,

-or cultural purity, it's dangerous.

-Yeah.

But what they have to maintain is vigour

and self-respect, self-determination,

empowerment, and frankly also the forest is very important

for all of us, and they know that.

Part of what this team is doing is bringing film equipment

so the community can record historical information

from their elders, so they've been very excited about this.

Well, first morning

on the Xingu, well, tributaries of the Xingu,

erm...

Coming to life quite slowly.

Poured with rain in the middle of the night.

It's the rainy season. Pelted down with rain.

I think they may be just sort of

plugging a few leaks back there.

These houses -

and I must not call them huts, I know that, they're houses -

are really fantastic, beautifully-built.

Spent quite a comfortable night there. Quite a buggy

sort of atmosphere, but then it is the wet season.

My first impression is it's almost most exotic than

right up the north with the Yanomami,

and yet I think there's more influence from outside here.

You see t-shirts, a pick-up truck. There's a satellite dish and

things like that, so something is happening here

which is slightly different... Well,

very different, actually, to the Yanomami.

I think these people are seeing more of the world outside.

Anyway, breakfast.

Thank you.

You have real potential, Michael.

At last, something I can do in life!

The preparation of food is, quite literally, hands on.

And the Wauja women have work for me. That's tricky there.

Manioc is a nutritious root that grows all year round.

It certainly isn't a fast food.

They're saying you're very good at it.

Don't let my wife see this.

She will never peel a potato again.

After the peeling, the grating.

Now, my technique here is not taken altogether seriously.

What's so funny?

SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

Don't go, don't go, you should stay here

and we'll take you to the manioc garden.

-They want you to take me, yeah.

-You are the ideal husband.

-Oh, well.

This way, this way.

Oh, yeah, course, of course... That's it, yes,

yes. This is the best cookery course I've been on, really.

You'll never do this for Jamie Oliver.

How long does it take them to prepare this?

Just, I've just done five minutes, I'm exhausted.

-About three hours a day.

-Three hours a day, gosh.

-They work hard.

-They work very hard. No slackers?

-No slackers.

But a lazy person, are they

stigmatised by the rest of the group?

-Oh, yes very much, very much so.

-In what way? Called rude names?

Well, yes, sometimes the women won't want to marry them.

Is it very important for them to marry?

I mean, couldn't they just have the nice life as a bachelor?

Well, imagine how could you live well if you had no manioc?

You need to have a female relative to make it for you.

Now I know what the men's role is.

My final test, could

I turn the grated manioc into beiju - traditional Wauja bread.

This is getting fire in my eyes.

Harder, OK.

Ah.

I just can't see anything cos I'm

just getting smoke in my eyes.

You're probably jealous that your

wife is entertaining affection for someone else

and that's why smoke is blowing in your eyes.

-Oh, is it? Oh.

-That's the reason.

OK, so where are we? Over again?

Yeah. Like that?

Well, I think I'm better on the grating.

Music and dance are an intrinsic part of Wauja life.

These sacred flutes can only be played, or indeed touched,

by the men-folk.

During sacred rituals, the women are not even allowed to see them,

but today's more of a social occasion, as young girls who have

been in puberty isolation are welcomed back to the community.

Later, Emi takes me to the house of her oldest and closest confidant,

the shaman Itsutaku. I ask him

if he feels confident about the future.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

The new danger is that, um, there are a lot of very

powerful interests that want to dam the rivers.

Damming the rivers destroys the ecology

and slowly strangles the whole community.

For instance, now they're planning to build a hydroelectric dam,

Belo Monte, which will be the third-largest dam ever built

and scientists who have studied it say it doesn't make any

sense unless there's a whole complex of dams planned. So,

it's an ecological catastrophe and I said to him, "How would you

"deal with that problem?" And he said,

"We don't have a solution for that."

I hope that Itsutaku's anxieties will prove unfounded.

The Wauja may be few, but that's no reason to allow a culture,

a language, and a way of life to simply disappear.

Bye-bye. Thank you. Tchau. Muito obrigato.

In the debate about the future of the rainforest,

the voice of the people who've lived here for thousands of years is

not only valuable, it's indispensable.

It's reassuring that someone else who also has

the future of the rainforest at heart is my pilot, Gerard Moss.

I spend hundreds of hours a year flying this plane at low level,

in the Amazon, and every single flight that I take

I discover new openings, new clearings, recent deforestation.

So, is it ever going to stop?

What do you think is the worst case scenario?

We have, in Brazil, lost approximately 20% of

the cover of the forest.

There's a general consensus among scientists

that once we lose close to 40% of the total area,

we could go into self destructive mode, and the forest becoming

a savannah, which has already started in certain areas.

Savannah meaning it's drying out,

it's becoming more vulnerable to fire, for instance.

So, fire, in a forested area of this size, could be kind of devastating?

Absolutely disastrous, because you have no access to combat

the fire, so these fires would go on for years, frankly.

And that is a real concern to us.

Do you think that the politicians have the will to change things?

One needs to look a bit further ahead. There's no doubt that

Brazil, frankly, is the, in my opinion, is the only

country in the world, on this planet,

that is capable of feeding huge,

vast amounts of people, we're going to be nine billion,

in some years' time.

There's no country that has all the resources, the space,

the land, and especially the water.

The decisions on how this abundance is to be managed

and administered will be

taken at the next stop on my journey,

as I fly 300 miles south from the natural

wonders of the rainforest, to the man-made wonders of one

of the most modern capital cities in the world, Brasilia.

Finding the difficult balance between wealth creation

and conservation is being argued out here in the country's parliament.

Designed in the 1950s by a communist, Oscar Niemeyer,

and laid out by another communist, Lucio Costa, Brasilia is a bold

and dazzling achievement.

From barren countryside to national capital in only five years.

The flags of the 26 Brazilian states fly outside

the ministries from which

the country's future will be decided.

Brazil's prosperity is growing fast,

enabling it to embark on ambitious projects like this brand new

stadium for the 2014 World Cup.

The economic rise of Brazil is in part due to the combination

of its rich, natural resources,

with an abundant and cheap workforce.

And at the very heart of the Brazilian capital there's

a statue that honours the working man.

This is a monument to the candangos,

the people who built this city over 50 years ago.

Next time, I'll be exploring where many of those candangos went

when the building boom in Brazilia subsided.

Their destination, along with many others from the north,

were the rich gold and iron mines of Minas Gerais

and the city that is synonymous with Brazil,

Rio de Janeiro.